Joyce Fegan: Wokeness without compassion achieves nothing

With the binary nature of the internet — the place where conversations around social justice issues now tend to take place — wokeness has turned into war, writes Joyce Fegan

Irish novelist John Banville recently spoke of his dislike for the so-called 'woke' movement, saying: 'Why were they asleep for so long? The same injustices were going on.' Picture: Nick Bradshaw

In a week where the internet once more ate itself alive over issues concerning gender, a comment made by Booker prize-winning author John Banville made headlines too.

“I despise this 'woke' movement. Why were they asleep for so long? The same injustices were going on. It's become a religious cult,” said the Irish author.

He had been speaking at the virtual Hay Festival’s Winter Weekend.

Agree or disagree with the author’s comments, he raises a timely topic.

'Wokeness' is a slang term meaning an awareness of social justice issues. 

A person can be 'woke' about any issue — issues such as climate change, veganism, gender, identity, racism, or reproductive rights — the idea being that once we have been awakened from our state of ignorance, privilege, or complacency, we can now do something about a systemic problem that oppresses many.

Action being the operative word and ideal end here.

But with the binary nature of the internet — the place where conversations around social justice issues now tend to take place — wokeness has turned into war.

“I think wokeness has robbed many a people of compassion and replaced it with moral superiority,” said Ayishat Akanbi, a British writer and stylist.

Ayishat, with Double Down Media, created a video entitled 'The Problem with Wokeness'. It went viral.

“Compassion and empathy are paramount to any social movement, and to any form of progress," she said.

"Once you have compassion and empathy, you can often see that you have a lot more in common with people than you do apart and it's the system under which we live in that forcefully tries to group us on our differences.” 

In this context, what is actually radical is the ability to hold perspectives differing to your own. An ability to understand another person’s perspective is what will bring about the change we seek.

“What is radical is understanding, that's the one thing they don't want us to do is to understand each other,” said Ayishat. "Arguing with each other isn't actually radical at all, it's very conformist actually."

Her problem with wokeness is its ability to be reductionist instead of progressive.

“I do think that wokeness does run the risk sometimes of reducing very complex issues," she said.

“Wokeness tends be quite reactionary instead of responsive; and so when you react, you go off with emotion and you go off with anger, resentment, humiliation — and that doesn't necessarily leave much space for nuance, and nuance is important in order to understand the interconnectedness of the issues,” she said.

And the very ideas that are chewed apart on the internet are sensitive, complex topics — the kind of topics where a great amount of understanding and context is needed. If the internet debates lack anything, it is context.

After her viral video on wokeness, Ayishat and Double Down News brought their attention to ‘cancel culture’ next.

Cancel culture — another highly contested concept — can mean the humiliation of a person, or a person’s reputation, for saying something unsavoury or harmful, either in the present or the past. The person may have said the comment in ignorance, out of context, or with intention to harm.

“Cancelling” a person is connected to wokeness.

“Cancel culture is just the popular name for cruelty culture, purity culture, moral superiority culture, one-upmanship culture, my-beliefs-outweigh-my-actions culture, identity-as-commodity culture,” wrote Ayishat.

She said it was also the name for a culture where you “act-like-I've-always-known-what-I-do-now culture”.

People who are “cancelled” include those who are not up-to-date “on whatever we’ve just learnt is offensive” and those who make “silly mistakes in the desperate attempt to belong according to the cultural norms of the time”.

In Ireland’s recent history we had the experience of going through a contentious referendum together — the repealing of the Eighth Amendment — in order to give people reproductive rights and the legal footing to terminate a pregnancy.

Prior to the referendum, there was the Citizens’ Assembly on the issue, where 100 people who didn’t know each other were taken from their ordinary lives to discuss the issue, to turn it around like a Rubik's Cube.

Those citizens remarked about how enjoyable the process was. They could air their concerns, their prejudices, their unconscious biases, without fearing attack, being cancelled, or ostracised.

When they finished their assembly of reasoned, informed, and respectful debate, the vast majority of those citizens — who had met face-to-face and not over the internet — recommended social change, and that the amendment be repealed, which it was by a majority vote of 66.4% in the referendum.

It is this kind of conversation on complex issues that is now both sorely missing and desperately needed in society, because without it, the change we debate about will not materialise.

In this internet world of binary debate, changing one’s mind, or having to learn about a complex issue, is seen as almost a moral failing.

“Changing your mind does confirm that you are still thinking,” said Ayishat. "If you can look back on yourself two years ago, three years ago, five years ago or maybe even a year, and slightly cringe without hating yourself I think you are moving in the right direction.

“Part of the beauty of living is that we do get to change our minds, update our beliefs, challenge ourselves, confront ourselves; and hopefully that brings a further understanding of who we are and who we are in relation to other people, and how we are similar.” 

But the thing is, we need to allow one another to update our beliefs, and not only that, but also to have those difficult discussions in the first place.

In the irony of all ironies, the 91-year-old linguist Noam Chomsky signed the now-infamous open letter calling out cancel culture and calling for the protection of free speech, as published in Harper's Bazaar this summer.

Chomsky, one of the most complex and progressive thinkers of our time, was then cancelled online by people who had probably never even heard of him until that point.

In October, he was asked about this in an interview he did with The New Yorker.

“That letter was so anodyne and insignificant; I barely noticed it,” he said. 

"The only interesting thing about that letter is the reaction to it. The reaction was extraordinary. It showed that the problem is far greater than I thought it was."

The problem is — do we want to be right, or do we want to bring about change?

For those who want to bring about progressive change and create a more inclusive world, the unfortunate truth is that it is up to us to bring the moderate middle with us, not alienate them.

It starts with dialogue. We can neither avoid hard conversations, nor can we shout someone into a state of understanding and agreement.